In 1984, the late Burns (d. 1990) published Cold Sassy Tree—a spirited, southern small-town rural tale with robust characters and a regional period (1906) diction that was as tangy and real as grits. Now comes this partial sequel—which continues the story of Will Tweedy and the courting of his future wife—that Burns, with extraordinary courage, worked on through her final illness. Burns's editor, Katrina Kenison, who was left with notes and letters by the author to indicate plotlines beyond the 15 finished chapters here, has contributed a tribute and personal reminiscence. The previous novel concerned the adventures of narrator Will Tweedy, then 14, of Cold Sassy Tree, Georgia, who among others wondered at the shocking marriage of newly widowed Grandpa Blakeslee and the stylish Miss Love. Now, in 1917, Grandpa is gone, and boarding with Miss Love is that ``pure-T beauty,'' new schoolteacher Sanna Maria Klein, who's infatuated with a Harvard boy—until her disastrous visit to his fancy home when bath water floods a festive board. Will's courting moves on—even through a Thanksgiving when Sanna's usually genial foster-father, snookered on moonshine, saws a half moon out of the dining-room table to accommodate his massive stomach—but there are seeds of trouble even before the wedding: Will, a county agent for the state's Department of Agriculture, speaks of farming's gamble as ``excitin','' Sanna says, ``I hate excitement...just another word for worry.'' Meanwhile, most of the Cold Sassy Tree cast is here again: abrasive Aunt Loma, who can whistle ``Whispering Hope'' so thrillingly at church but who has crazy marriage plans, as well as a mean deal for her son; Will's parents, yoked but apart; and townsfolk who have the stubborn endurance of hardscrabble lives beyond their salty talk. For fans of Cold Sassy Tree, an essential; for newcomers, a spur to read the earlier novel. Kenison's tribute to Burns, a gentle, gallant woman, comprises half of the book. (Eight-page photo insert)
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1992
ISBN: 0-89919-908-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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